


absolute ultimate

by heroics



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2019-2020 NHL Season, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, aka I made things up, an assist from dirty jobs with mike rowe, dumbass4dumbass, slightly future fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 05:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20847983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroics/pseuds/heroics
Summary: It’s a kind of ritual, now, that Travis and Pat spend at least the first night of every road trip at the hotel, bickering over the Discovery Channel.





	absolute ultimate

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely a work of fiction with no bearing on reality; I’m fine with sharing on Tumblr and in private chats, but please don’t link it publicly on Twitter, where real people live. If you’re here somehow by googling yourself or people you know, well — don’t say anything, won’t be anything.
> 
> Thanks to Betsy, my one true.

Travis and Pat leave the bar in Nashville early, just after the old married brigade heads out. Everybody else crams into a big booth afterward, and that’s where they are when Travis checks the time on his phone and orders an Uber for two. 

It’s a dumb bar anyway — this fake-hillbilly decor, and cocktails served in mason jars, and clay pigeons, actual ones for skeet shooting, tacked to the wall above the bathroom doors.

So: “We’re going back to the hotel, boys,” Travis announces, slinging his arm around Patty. “Fuckin’ excellent game.” And it was: they beat the Preds in regulation by some fucking miracle; Travis got one assist and Pat got two, which Travis knows he’s relieved about, even if he’d never admit it. Since the news broke about his migraine disorder and he had to miss the preseason, he’s been extra stressed about, like, delivering. 

Across the booth, G shakes his head at them, but he’s smiling. “Can’t miss your programs?”

“Exactly.” Travis pulls out Pat’s wallet while he’s distracted finishing his last drink — some pretentious craft beer that probably tastes like ass — and drops a few bills on the table. “There, that should cover us.”

Patty turns and looks at the money, then at Travis. “Did you pickpocket me?”

“Obviously,” Travis says. He holds up his phone. “I got the Uber, so.”

“Oh. Okay.” Pat puts his big hand on top of Travis’s head and scritches at his hair, still damp from the locker-room shower, a move that shouldn’t be hot — it should be condescending, annoying — and yet, and yet. Travis’s body is a traitor. He reaches up and pulls Pat’s hand off, then just keeps a grip on it. No particular reason.

“Communication is very important in marriage,” G says, watching them with a smirk. Ever since he tied the knot with Ryanne, he’s stepped up on the married-jokes front.

“The most important thing,” Carter adds, from his spot next to G, which is like— 

“What the fuck do you know about marriage,” Pat says, in his dumb, flat voice, and Travis grins. It’s nice to be on the same page. 

Things devolve into chirping about some of the younger guys’ complicated relationship statuses: who’s wheeling three different girls, who’s talking to someone but can’t decide whether to take the next step, who’s been fucking one person for months and needs to end it or put a label on it before she moves. Travis is still holding Patty’s hand, which feels like — a lot to be happening. 

“I’m too old for this shit,” G says. “I meant what I said about communication, you have to _talk_ to the person. Christ.”

“Oh, fuck, two minutes away,” says Travis when he gets a notification. He lets go of Pat’s hand and scoots out of the booth. “Come on, Patty, I have a five-star passenger rating to protect.”

“No you fucking don’t,” Pat says as he fistbumps the boys, rapid-fire. “It’s like a 4.72.”

“Well, do you want it to get lower?” He finally pulls Patty away and starts herding him toward the door. “Come on, come on.”

“Use protection,” Provy calls after them. 

“We’re trying for a baby,” Travis yells back, dodging a slap from Pat.

No one’s surprised by them leaving together. It’s a kind of ritual, now, that Travis and Patty spend at least the first night of every road trip at the hotel, bickering over the Discovery Channel. They get chirped every time, of course, but Travis doesn’t care. He loves celebrating with the boys, but he’s happier hanging out with Pat. Sometimes, when the team doesn’t go out, they even order room service. 

It’s a realization that he had at some point late in the last season. That he’d basically always rather be with Patty. 

“We missed Gold Rush,” Pat says, frowning, from the other side of the Uber, en route to the hotel. 

Travis rolls his eyes. “Would you rather have us lose the game and not go out with the boys?”

“Obviously not,” Pat says, swatting Travis’s arm. “But it was a new episode, I think.”

Travis reaches over and gives Pat’s thigh a little pat — ha — through his suit pants. “Gold Rush is always on, bud. We’ll catch it another time.”

“I bet it’ll be Moonshiners,” Pat says. He’s blinking out the window now, and Travis wonders if this might be one of those nights where Pat makes it through about twenty minutes of TV and then falls into a dead sleep. “Since we’re in Tennessee and everything.”

“Can’t argue with that logic.” Travis is thinking, stupidly, about the first time he saw Pat, how he immediately thought: _he’s kind of pretty_. Then he thought: _jeez, second overall, that’s a fuckton of pressure_. Then: _he looks scared shitless and way too serious. I gotta wipe that frown off his face._

It took hours to get anything but a tight-lipped little smile from Pat, and days to make him laugh. When he finally did, shaking his tipped-back head like he was trying to hide his wide grin, Travis thought: _I need to get that to happen as often as I possibly fucking can_.

//

Once they get to the room, they change into sleep clothes and brush their teeth in relative silence, which means Travis chats aimlessly through all of it and Patty grunts occasionally so Travis knows he’s still alive. It’s nice of him. Considerate. Pat is still brushing his, slow and methodical, when Travis is done, so he ambles out and turns on the TV. Starts flipping around channels. 

Pat comes out and stands next to him, hands on hips, as Travis tries to find Discovery. Fucking weird-ass channel numbers down here. 

“Do you have a water bottle?” Pat asks. 

Travis reaches down, grabs one out of his bag and tosses it to Pat, watching as Pat cracks it open and swallows down a sip with a couple of pills. 

“Migraine meds?” Travis asks. 

“Yeah,” Pat says, and he doesn’t go red — well, no redder than usual — or extra mumbly, so Travis is counting it as progress. “I feel fine, just gotta take them.”

That’s also required some work — getting Patty to tell Travis how he’s feeling without lots of prompting and cajoling. 

“That’s good, Patty,” Travis says. He hardly knows whether it’s in response to Pat saying he feels fine, or if it’s approval for Pat taking his medicine and talking to Travis about it. Not that — not that Pat needs Travis’s approval. It’s just nice for both of them when Travis says it. 

Still, the mood now is weirdly heavy, so it’s a relief when he fucking finally lands on the Discovery Channel. 

“Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe,” he crows, throwing himself onto the bed and turning up the volume. He does a little horizontal mini-celly. “This is the best day of my life.”

“Low bar,” says Pat. He tosses the water bottle over to the other bed and lays himself out next to Travis anyway. He’s so long and skinny, he looks like one of those worm-on-a-string things. Travis giggles, and Pat frowns at him. “What?”

“You’re a worm,” is all Travis can manage, and then Pat is rolling his long, wormy body toward him and they’re wrestling, while onscreen Mike Rowe is dealing with, like, an aboveground pool full of mosquitos. 

They end up, somehow, with Pat sprawled sideways over the bed, and Travis using Pat’s stomach as a pillow. It feels good, Travis decides, the slow rise and fall of Patty breathing under him. Pat’s got his hand on Travis’s head again, like in the bar. He could turn — it’d be so easy — and tug up the hem of Pat’s shirt, give him a kiss right on the soft skin of his belly. 

He doesn’t do that. He turns his attention back to Dirty Jobs. 

“How do you get rid of all these?” Mike Rowe is asking, presumably about the chlorine soup of mosquitos. 

“Well, it’s not easy,” says the exterminator lady. 

Pat says, “This seems like it would really _suck_, huh?”

“Yeah, bud,” Travis says, and then he gets it, the stupid pun, and is required morally and legally to turn and glare at Pat, who’s got a little self-satisfied smirk on. Ridiculous. Travis wants — he just wants. 

//

He’s self-aware enough these days to know that he likes the feeling of Pat’s body against his in a way that’s distinctly not buddies. That he wants to get inside Patty and just — stay there. Fuck him up a little, pull his hair, get him down on his knees and looking up at Travis with those pretty eyes, those flushed cheeks he hates to be teased about. Maybe he’d be real good and let Travis come all over his face. Lick it up afterward. Jesus.

He’s got to stop thinking about this while Pat’s dick is, like, inches from him, and Pat’s hand is in his hair.

Then again, it's felt like maybe they’re building up to something since the start of the season. Probably earlier. After all, Patty always comes back to the hotel with Travis, and he puts up with a lot of shit from Travis that he doesn’t from anyone else. He gets this particular satisfied look when Travis fights guys on his behalf. And over the summer, when Patty was trying not to freak out about his migraine thing, Travis was the person he called at strange times to talk through it. He lets Travis take care of him, basically, even if he grumbles about it.

As for liking dudes, Pat’s never actually said anything except for maybe his weird shit about Toews — but neither has Travis, really, beyond typical flirty locker-room stuff that can easily be passed off as buddies. Travis’s tentative plan is to mention very casually that he thinks some guy is attractive, and then kinda go from there. Pat can be slow on the uptake, but they’ve both got these shiny new contracts, so — there’s time. No need to rush things. 

//

“Mike Rowe,” he blurts out, and then clamps his mouth shut. Shit. Goddamn.

“What about him?” Pat asks.

Travis can feel Pat’s warm stomach going up and down slowly underneath his head, and keeps his eyes glued to the screen, where, in fact, Mike Rowe does look pretty good. All right — fine, then. He could play this off, but he might as well shrug and say, “He’s kinda hot. For, like, an old dude, you know?”

There’s a little stutter in Pat’s breathing that Travis probably wouldn’t notice if he weren’t using Pat as a pillow. “Maybe if he was doing something other than a literal dirty job, I’d agree with you, bud.”

“I’ll show you a dirty job,” says Travis in his best seductive voice. For emphasis, he squeezes Pat’s ankle. 

Pat rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

He doesn’t get it. He thinks Travis is just being — buddies, still. Travis sits up fast and turns so he’s kneeling on the bed, facing Patty. “No, like, fuck Mike Rowe,” he says.

“Yeah, I get it, you’d love to,” says Pat, smirking, but there’s a high spot of color on his cheeks, and he’s not quite meeting Travis’s eyes, so something — something about this is getting to him. That’s enough for Travis to continue. 

“No, I mean — forget Mike Rowe. Fuck, Patty, I’m trying to—” Travis cuts himself off; Pat looks up at him, finally meeting his gaze, and his eyes are dark, so Travis curses under his breath and yanks Pat up by the shoulders and kisses him. 

It’s way too forceful: he gentles it immediately, strokes his fingers over Pat’s soft hair as a little apology. He tilts his head to get a better angle. Pat isn’t really kissing back, but then he makes a sound and curls his hand over Travis’s shoulder.

Travis pulls back to look at him, and—

“Don’t fuck with me,” Pat says, first thing, sitting up and folding his big body into crisscross applesauce position. “If this is some — some prank, or—”

“A _prank_?” Travis repeats. “Patty, why would I, about this kind of thing—”

“You just said you think Mike Rowe is hot, what the fuck else am I supposed to—”

“He _is_,” Travis says, and he can’t believe they’re fighting right now, except that he really, really can. “He looks _good_ for his age.”

Patty mumbles something, too low even for Travis’s trained ear. “You gotta speak up, bud.”

Pat’s even redder now. “Fuck you. I said he’s not my type.”

“What’s your type, then, baby?”

“Dumbfuck,” says Pat. He looks so tense; Travis will have to make a joke just so Pat unclenches his jaw enough for them to keep kissing. “Take a guess.”

He’s making it way too easy. Travis hums. “Think there’s a certain Chicago captain you’ve had an eye on for years.”

“What — oh, fuck you, do not bring Jonny into this.” 

_Jonny._ “Bud, I saw you jerking it to a Best of Jonathan Toews compilation that time. You can’t lie to me.”

“That’s about his hockey,” Pat says, which is — okay, fair. “And I wasn’t jerking it, pervert. I was appreciating.”

“All right,” Travis says. Pat will never admit to it. He leans back on his hands. “So tell me your type.”

Pat’s eyes flicker to him and away. He’s pink-cheeked again, watching Dirty Jobs with forced concentration, like there’ll be an exam on it. “Short,” he says finally. 

Travis grins. 

“Annoying as fuck,” Pat continues. He cuts his eyes at Travis, glaring a little, but it’s only for show: it doesn’t match his actual annoyed face. “Stupid facial hair. Never shuts up.”

“Baby,” Travis says, touched.

“Ridiculous tattoos.”

Travis kisses him again, way gentler this time. He licks at Pat’s soft lips, trying to prove — something else, something more than before. Pat opens his mouth to him, so Travis obviously gets his tongue inside there. Checks things out. Takes his time.

Pat tolerates it for a bit, and then he pushes Travis back a little so he can lick into Travis’s mouth instead. He tastes tingly, cold and warm at the same time, like the mint toothpaste they both use, which is — it shouldn’t be so hot. Travis tilts his head so they slot together and suddenly it’s fucking _go go go_, urgent, and Travis has one hand fisted in Patty’s hair, whenever the fuck that happened, and he gives it a tug, experimentally. 

Patty honest-to-God gives a little moan and arches toward him, like it’s totally out of his control. 

“All right,” Travis says, forcing himself to pull back before he does something actually crazy. “I was going to be super polite and gentlemanly, and ask if you wanted to take this slow, but clearly, uh—”

“That would be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said to me, and you’ve said a lot of dumb shit,” Pat says. He sounds gratifyingly breathless: _I did that,_ Travis thinks stupidly, some reptile-brain possessiveness clawing up to the surface. He has to focus on what Patty says next. “Wait, do _you_ want to go slow—?”

“Fuck no,” Travis says. “Feels like we’ve been going slow for like two years now, bud.”

“Yeah,” Pat says, and then he’s pushing Travis to one side of the bed and clambering off the other side himself. “Clothes off.”

Next time, Travis thinks, scrambling to unbutton his shirt, he’s going to take Patty’s clothes off himself. He flings his belt into some corner of the room and says, “I can’t believe you said I have stupid facial hair. You, of all people.”

“I can’t believe you said _I’ll show you a dirty job_,” Pat huffs. He’s sitting on the bed again, down to his briefs, Jesus Christ. “That was the worst come-on I’ve ever heard.”

“Speaking of _come_-ons,” Travis says significantly, raising his voice when Pat makes a fake-disgusted noise. He knees up onto the bed. “You can come on me if you play your cards right. Yeah?”

Patty face-washes him, but he doesn’t say no. 

//

They make out a little more, and then Travis gets Pat sprawled across the bed and kneels between his legs. “Don’t move.”

Pat rolls his eyes even though he’s tenting his briefs, which is just an insane thing for Travis to look at and know he caused. “Where the fuck would I go.”

“Nowhere, Patty,” Travis says. “Nowhere at all.” On a whim, he thumbs across one of Pat’s nipples, and Pat shudders upward, his teeth dug into his bottom lip. 

“Teeks,” he says — whines, really. 

It’s fucking crazy, seeing him like this. “You gotta tell me what you want, baby.”

“Just — God. Touch me. Whatever. Get me off.” Pat’s face is so, so red.

“Patience is a virtue, Pats,” Travis says absently, running his hands up Patty’s pale thighs — talk about ridiculous tattoos. The best part of this whole thing is coaxing reactions out of Patty, he’s decided. 

“Patience, fuck you,” Pat gripes. His hips roll up a little. “What do you know about patience, eh?”

“More than you,” Travis says, but Pat is really starting to look desperate, so he kisses him hard as a reward. 

Pat leans up and tries to chase his lips when Travis pulls back again. “No,” Travis says, tugging Pat back to the bed by his hair, mostly because he knows Pat’s going to bitch at him about it, maybe smack him away. That’ll be fun.

Instead, Patty whines, high and needy, and his hips shove upward like he can’t help himself.

“Oh,” Travis says.

“Shut up,” Patty says, squeezing his eyes closed. “God, I can’t—”

“Hey, no, bud, I need you to look at me.”

Pat opens his eyes the least amount possible, squinting. He’s so red. 

This is — this is a lot. Travis can work with it. He shifts on the bed.

“Hey, Nolan,” Travis says, low. It feels serious in a new way, somehow, to use Pat’s first name. “I’m gonna make you come—” Pat makes a punched-out sound— “but first you have to answer something for me. Who takes care of you, baby?”

“What?” 

“You heard me,” says Travis. He hopes he hasn’t miscalculated. He spreads his palms over Pat’s thighs and just looks at him.

Pat whines and kicks at Travis’s leg. “_God_, just fucking — come on, Trav.”

Travis slides down a little, hunches over and gives Pat’s belly a kiss right above his waistband, just how he thought about earlier. The thing is, Pat could easily shove Travis back or pull him up to kiss him or do any number of things. But he’s not doing them: he’s lying here, furiously red, his hands flat at his sides. Complaining, sure, but also leaking a wet spot on the front of his briefs and staring at Travis like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen.

“Who takes care of you?” Travis asks again as he nibbles at Patty’s inner thigh. There’s a long, tense silence, like Pat’s trying to make a decision about this, and then a shuddering sigh, and—

“Fuck — you do, Teeks, all right.” He digs his head back into the pillow. Red all the way down to his nipples. “Come on. You know you do.”

He sounds embarrassed, but also really turned on, and — maybe later, another time, at home, they can get into that, specifically. Travis imagines Patty flushed red all over, letting him say and do real nasty shit. Patty shame-faced and loving it. Fuck. He has to palm himself through his underwear and lean back up to kiss Pat, stroke his jaw. “That was good, Nolan, so good.”

“Prove it,” Patty says, biting at Travis’s lips, “and give me what you told me. Christ. Make me come.”

“Okay, okay.” Travis shimmies back onto his belly between Pat’s legs and looks up at him. “I’ve never done this before, so don’t be an asshole.”

Pat lets out a choked laugh. “Not gonna last long, anyway.”

Travis tugs down Pat’s briefs and kisses the head of his cock, scoping out what the play’s going to be. He really hasn’t done this before: with other guys, it’s only been hurried grinding and messy handjobs. 

At first he tries to be clinical about it, do the little fancy moves he knows feel good on the other end, but it turns out he really, really loves having Pat’s dick in his mouth, and his ideas about technique go out the window. He’s kind of sloppy with it, lost in the heady feeling of the weight of Pat on his tongue. He tries to breathe through his nose and not to use teeth and mostly succeeds. He didn’t expect this to be a power trip — he thought he’d feel like he was at Pat’s mercy, and that would fuck up the dynamic they’ve fallen into. But instead he’s in charge, holding Patty’s hips down with his forearm, making him stay there while Travis takes him apart with his mouth.

If he grinds down against the bed a few times, groaning on Pat’s cock, well — who the fuck’s going to tell on him? Patty? 

And anyway, Pat’s making noise, too, Travis realizes, and slows down so he can focus on it. “Fuck, Teeks,” Pat says, in his stupid-low gravelly voice. “You look so good like this.”

He sounds taken apart. His big hand comes up and cradles the back of Travis’s head. “Shit, Trav, I’m gonna — you—”

Travis really wants him to come in his mouth, wants to see how Pat would react if Travis swallowed it all, but he’s not sure he can manage that this time. He pulls off with a slick-hot noise and starts jacking Pat off. Tilts his face up. Opens his mouth. Shit, his jaw hurts, but it’s akin to the soreness of taking a punch on the ice. Like it’s correct, supposed to happen. It settles something in him. He barely remembers his own erection: everything’s focused on Pat — Nolan — getting him off, making him feeling good. 

“Come on,” he says, so low that he doubts Pat even hears it over his own moaning. Still, as if on cue — and _fuck_, that’s a hot idea — Pat lets out this little strangled yelp and comes over Travis’s cheeks and lips and collarbone. His hand is tight in Travis’s hair, sending a jolt of heat down Travis’s spine, and he whines, licks his lips, as Patty shakes through it. Fuck. It’s hot, like _literally_ hot, and Travis knew it would be, but it’s still somehow a shock. 

“Next time,” Travis says, just running his mouth and pressing his hips to the bed to get some friction while Pat catches his breath, “next time, I want to eat you out until you cry.”

“Jesus, Teeks, you can’t just — Jesus,” Pat says, still twitching with aftershocks, and pulls him up and onto his lap. He kisses him, like he doesn’t even care that Travis probably tastes like his dick, his come — or maybe that gets him hot, too, Travis thinks wildly. “How do you want—?”

“Just your hand, I’m so close,” Travis manages, gasping. When Pat’s big, warm hand slides into his boxers and starts stroking him, he tucks his face into Pat’s neck and sucks at the junction between his neck and his shoulder. “Patty, wanna do everything to you, baby. Sweetheart. Can I call you that? Fuckin’ — I’ll finger you until you beg me to fuck you, come in you and lick it out again—”

“Jesus,” Pat says again. He’s kind of just breathing against Travis’s cheek as he jerks him off slow and tight. Absolutely brutal. “Should’ve known you only shut up when I’m keeping your mouth busy.”

It’s a dumb line, but it does the trick anyway, and Travis tenses in Pat’s lap and comes between them, still babbling nonsense that might or might not be human language. Who can ever tell. He shakes through it — can’t believe he’s coming this hard from a handjob. Can’t believe it’s Patty giving him one. 

As Travis comes down, his breathing evening out, he realizes Pat is tracing circles on his back with his fingertips. He gives Pat a gentle bite just to let him know he’s with it, and then leaves his mouth open against the warm skin of Pat’s shoulder. “Feels nice.”

“You’re filthy,” Pat says. His deep-ass monotone is mostly just a rumble against Travis’s neck. Travis thinks, weirdly, of earthquakes — probably thanks to all the Discovery Channel. “Fuckin’ disgusting, Teeks.”

“You like it,” Travis mumbles. He grabs a lock of Pat’s hair and tugs just a little. Pat hums. “You’re not exactly a fucking nun, either, bud. The only time I shut up is when my _mouth_ is busy?”

He feels Pat shrug, doesn’t have to look to know his face is bright red. “Didn’t even think you’d remember that one. Since it made you come so hard.”

Which is a reminder that, yeah, there’s Travis’s come all over both their stomachs, and it’s going to start being actually disgusting soon. He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to leave the little bubble it feels like they’re in. 

“I’m gonna get stuff to clean us off, ‘kay?” he says eventually, pulling back to look at Patty.

Pat smiles, one of the rare and genuine ones that slide over his whole face. Maybe even more rewarding now than it was the first time Travis made it happen. “Okay.”

//

After Travis has gotten a wet washcloth from the hotel bathroom and cleaned them up, he turns the TV off — he can’t believe Discovery Channel was playing the whole fucking time — and slides back into bed. Patty’s mostly contained himself to one side, and he’s lying on his back, blinking at the ceiling. It could be awkward, Travis thinks as he turns and faces him. It’s not. 

So he doesn’t actually feel too nervous when he nudges Pat’s leg with his foot, thinking about what G said at the bar about communication. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

Predictably, Patty turns his head and glares at him through slitted eyelids. “Why am I the girlfriend? You’re like two feet shorter than me.”

“Yeah, but you’re prettier,” Travis says, and it comes out way too honest. Patty’s eyes crinkle a little. 

“You think I’m pretty, bud?”

Travis mutters, “Pretty dumb,” and pretends to hate it when Pat crawls back over and straddles him, his bony knees pressing into Travis’s hips. “It might also be the way your face is as smooth as a newborn baby—”

“We could both be the girlfriend,” Pat points out, like that makes any fucking sense. “You know, lesbians exist, too, _Travis_.”

“Whatever you want, sure,” Travis says. He’s lost the plot on the whole communication thing, so he just shifts and kind of throws his weight, so Patty’s rolling off of him again. Then he turns and presses his back toward him. “C’mon, be the big spoon.”

“So needy,” Pat says, grumbling — like he has any fucking room to talk — but he pulls the blanket up over them, nudges one long leg between Travis’s and curls his arm over Travis’s waist. He’s warm and perfect. “All right, TK. Good night.”

He’s trying to condition Travis into going quietly to sleep, but it’s just not going to happen. 

So: “Hey,” he says after a minute. Pat groans a little, but Travis maturely moves past it. “I’m glad we’re both here.”

“What, like on the planet?”

He’s such an asshole. Travis kicks backward under the blanket until his heel connects with Pat’s calf and he hears him hiss. “No, Jesus. I mean I’m glad I didn’t get traded. And that you didn’t get traded either. I wanna be with you all the time and shit.”

Patty snorts. “The romance of it all,” he says, and gives Travis a little squeeze. “Me too, bud.”

Travis feels Pat kiss the back of his neck. In terms of communication, he thinks drowsily, they could be doing a lot worse. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Unsingable Name” by Mike Doughty.


End file.
